


blood ties

by jediqueen



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jediqueen/pseuds/jediqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will isn't weird because of the empathy. No, the weirdness is a family thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blood ties

Will was strange from the time he was born. He didn't do what other babies did; several times a night, his mother would come to stand over his crib and worry because the baby was far too silent, far too aware. Those big wandering eyes would focus and bore into her, and she found herself unnerved.

No one was quite sure what happened to her. One day, she just stopped eating and never started up again. She withered away in that house with only her husband to watch. Will was barely one when she died.

He had no memories of his mother. Will's father tried to tell him stories, but they never stuck. What did stick were the visits with his aunt and uncle and cousins; they told him the good stories. They told him why Will couldn't let his friends eat any of their food when they came over, why he could cut things open and then let them go like nothing had ever happened.

 

 -

 

His father started getting sick. It wasn't a normal kind of sick, the kind the doctors could see. It was a heart sickness from losing mother. Will saw it as a darkness radiating from his father's chest, but never found out what his father saw. His aunt couldn't do anything for him.

"This is why we don't marry normal people." She chastised his father over a glass of foxglove wine one night. Will didn't think they could see him out in the hallway, but his father could certainly sense him nearby.

"To bed, Will." He sounded so tired, not at all like the man who'd taught Will how to catch and kill and gut a fish. For just a moment the shadow over his father flickered. Only the three of them saw it there, biding it's time.

 

-

 

Growing up was more difficult for Will than for regular teenagers. There were two ways of doing everything; the way he did it at home, and the way that everyone else did it. Eventually, he stopped making too many mistakes, and his father allowed him to attend high school.

The mistakes never did stop althogether; sometimes he came out with something a little too gruesome for the rest of the kids to feel entirely comfortable around him. He couldn't talk about himself. They never knew about his hobbies or his preferences; how the neighbor's dog was so used to being cut up it was no longer afraid, how the school's food was bland without his father's nigthshade mixture.

Will didn't make any friends, not even the typical weird kids would hang out with him. His odd insights into their personal lives put them off. Whenever he tried to explain how he knew the things he did, he ended up sounding insane. Most of the kids there thought he was insane anyways.

 

-

 

The day after Will turned eighteen, the darkness stopped his father's heart. As he'd been instructed, Will cut a lock of his father's hair before he called an ambulance.

Once he was alone, he set up a small altar. The hair he burned, whispering words to go with his father. With no other immediate family in the house, Will was left to plan the funeral. He didn't think he could stomach the process, but he knew someone who could, so he called Cousin Wednesday.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, just in case it wasn't totally clear, in this 'verse Will is related to the Addams family.


End file.
